Re: Sweet Cindy

In my experience of teaching high school and college students for 40 years,
I have observed a characteristic that is nearly universal. Invincibility.
There does not exist anything that could harm them. So going off to war to a
drag race could have no ill effects.
--
D. Wain Garrison
If you can read you can learn anything
For there are those who can write who are smarter than you are
However not everyone who can write is smarter than you are.
"WaIIy" <eIvez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:dlv1g112ftthrb7ctratm95onhl58cq9se@xxxxxxxxxx
> Best of the Web Today - August 15, 2005
>
> By JAMES TARANTO
>
> The Sorrow and the Pity
> Time magazine reports that Cindy Sheehan's family is "imploding":
>
> Sheehan lost her job at Napa County [Calif.] Health and Human Services
> because of all her absences, she says. Husband Pat, 52, couldn't bear
> having [fallen son] Casey's things at home and put most of them in
> storage. "We grieved in totally different ways," Cindy says. "He wanted
> to grieve by distracting himself. I wanted to immerse myself." . . . The
> couple separated in June.
>
> Daughter Carly, 24, wrote a poem that begins, "Have you ever heard the
> sound of a mother screaming for her son?" Surviving son Andy, 21,
> supports his mother in principle but recently sent her a long e-mail
> imploring her "to come home because you need to support us at home," he
> says.
>
> The New York Times reports that Mrs. Sheehan's politics were the cause
> of her marital collapse:
>
> She said she and her husband separated a few months ago as a result of
> the war, and of her activism. Although she and her estranged husband are
> both Democrats, she said she is more liberal than he is, and now, more
> radicalized.
>
> The Times doesn't elaborate on Mrs. Sheehan's description of herself as
> "radicalized." Through her own words, unreported by either Time or the
> Times, she makes clear that she has embraced a grotesque ideology that
> goes far beyond garden-variety Angry Left paranoia--though it includes
> plenty of that, as National Review's Byron York reported last week:
>
> "This is something that can't be ignored," Sheehan said during a
> conference call with bloggers representing sites like democrats.com,
> codepink4peace.org, and crooksandliars.com. "They can't ignore us, and
> they can't put us down. Thank God for the Internet, or we wouldn't know
> anything, and we would already be a fascist state."
>
> "Our government is run by one party, every level," Sheehan continued,
> "and the mainstream media is a propaganda tool for the government."
> Sheehan also called the 2004 presidential election "the election,
> quote-unquote, that happened in November."
>
> Sheehan spoke at an April San Francisco State University rally in
> support of Lynne Stewart, who was convicted in February of providing
> material aid to terrorists. Here's an excerpt:
>
> I was raised in a country by a public school system that taught us that
> America was good, that America was just. America has been killing people
> . . . since we first stepped on this continent, we have been responsible
> for death and destruction. I passed on that bull*** to my son and my
> son enlisted. I'm going all over the country telling moms: "This country
> is not worth dying for." If we're attacked, we would all go out. We'd
> all take whatever we had. I'd take my rolling pin and I'd beat the
> attackers over the head with it. But we were not attacked by Iraq. We
> might not even have been attacked by Osama bin Laden if 9/11 was their
> Pearl Harbor to get their neo-con agenda through and, if I would have
> known that before my son was killed, I would have taken him to Canada. I
> would never have let him go and try and defend this morally repugnant
> system we have. The people are good, the system is morally repugnant. .
> . .
>
> What they're saying, too, is like, it's okay for Israel to have nuclear
> weapons. But Iran or Syria better not get nuclear weapons. It's okay for
> the United States to have nuclear weapons. It's okay for the countries
> that we say it's okay for. We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right
> now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for
> practically eternity now. It's okay for them to have them, but Iran or
> Syria can't have them. It's okay for Israel to occupy Palestine, but
> it's--yeah--and it's okay for Iraq to occupy--I mean, for the United
> States to occupy Iraq, but it's not okay for Syria to be in Lebanon.
>
> Earlier in April, at a speech before the United Methodist Church in
> Venice, Calif., Sheehan likened Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to
> "Hitler and Stalin" and was particularly lurid in describing her hatred
> of Rumsfeld's then-deputy:
>
> As soft-spoken and sincere-sounding as Paul Wolfowitz is, is there yet
> any sane adult in this country whose skin does not crawl when this
> murderous liar opens his mouth and speaks?
>
> She concluded: "In their secret hiding places, while celebrating newly
> won fortunes with their fellow brass, these men must surely congratulate
> themselves with orgies of carnal pleasure as they mock the multitudes
> who are yet so blind as to mistake them for God's devoted servants."
>
> The mainstream media have largely ignored Sheehan's crackpot views, and
> not only--perhaps not even primarily--for ideological reasons. Members
> of the White House press corps find the annual sojourn to Crawford
> deathly dull. They need something to do; they want bylines--and
> "heartbroken everymom" makes for a much more compelling story than
> "extremist hatemonger."
>
> The journalists will soon move on, and her political allies may do so as
> well. For them she is a mere instrument. The White House press corps
> will discard her as soon as they return to Washington where there's real
> news going on. Serious opponents of the war in Iraq will cast her aside
> if her foul statements make her an embarrassment. When that happens, we
> can only hope that someone still cares about Cindy Sheehan--not as a
> story or a symbol, but as a human being.
>


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